Adult Diagnosis: Now What?

Once I diagnosed myself with autism, I wanted a formal diagnosis. Many people have wondered why you would want a diagnosis when you’re already an adult.

I can only speak for myself. I have my Ph.D. in the humanities, so I have read a great many philosophers (I read a great many philosophers prior to getting my degree, which was among the reasons I wanted a Ph.D. in the humanities), and if there is a common thread among the philosophers, it is that you need to get to know yourself. To “know yourself”–as written at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (home of the Oracle at Delphi)–you have to think long and hard about yourself and your place in the world. I add to this having contemporary biological, evolutionary, psychological, neurological, and sociological knowledge about yourself as well. So to me, knowing whether or not I was autistic would allow me to better know myself.

Using the knowledge to better understand oneself means that you use that knowledge to better oneself, to understand one’s place in society, to clarify your past actions. It doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly be able to “fix” yourself; rather, it means you’ll have greater clarity about who you are and why you do the things you do.

That, I think, is what people ought to do with an adult diagnosis. But I know for a fact that that’s not always what happens. I know of someone who suspected her husband was on the spectrum. She started sharing information about Asperger’s with him, and he became convinced he was autistic. As a result, he started using it as an excuse for everything, to excuse everything he did. They ended up getting a divorce.

Too many people cannot seem to tell the difference between having a reason for something and having an excuse for something. Autism is a reason I may fail to notice you trying to greet me in a public place, but it’s no excuse to be rude. Knowing that my autism may make me less attentive to people immediately in front of me, I can make more of an effort to focus on whoever may be closer by, which will make it more likely I will notice when someone is trying to greet me.

There are of course other things I cannot help, such as my short term memory amnesia. Knowing about that won’t help me, but it most certainly does help others understand why it is that I can remember volumes of information while being simultaneously unable to remember your name right after you told it to me. Throughout the years I have been with my wife, I have told her that if she wants me to do something or get more than three items from the store, she will need to write it down. She thought that was ridiculous given how prodigious my long term memory is. When she heard the doctor diagnose me with short term amnesia, though, she finally understood what I had been telling her all these years was true. Now I get lists.

My diagnosis has, I believe, strengthened my marriage somewhat by my wife having a better understanding of some of the things I do and say (and don’t do and don’t say). I’m sure some of it is still annoying, but at least there’s some understanding there of it. And if something gets to annoying, I really do try to change what I’m doing, etc.

I also believe my diagnosis has helped me with my scholarship. I have published several peer reviewed articles on spontaneous order theory–a theory of economics and sociology–and I assumed like everyone else that people were fundamentally the same in their thinking, with slight variations in IQ or between men and women. However, I now know that not to be the case at all. The idea of neurodiversity suggests a much more complex system, a more deeply heterogeneous social system, than most people realize. This neurodiversity is what makes human society so dynamic and creative. The lack of it in other social species it what keeps them relatively stagnant in comparison.

My diagnosis, then, has had a significant impact on the way I think of myself and on the way I think about social issues. When you begin to realize that so many important people in the past and present were on the autism spectrum, and that autism is over-represented among creative people, you start thinking about creativity and social evolution quite differently. You also think about the importance of autism in society differently.

I’m not sure I would have written this blog if only my son were diagnosed with autism. I do not think I would have obsessively learned all I have learned about autism without my being autistic myself, so I certainly wouldn’t have had the depth and breadth of topics as I have had here.

In any case, I’m glad I was diagnosed. I suspect it has weakened some relationships from people who are likely sick of hearing me talk about autism all the time. I also suspect those people miss my talking about topics they found interesting. But it has also strengthened a few relationships. I know myself much better than I did before, and I think I understand the world a little better as well. Which is probably no coincidence. Know yourself, know the world.